One Too Many

Project Description

Lanfranco Aceti, is proud to announce the premiere in the US, at the Boston Athenaeum, of a new performance of Stefanos Tsivopoulos: One Too Many. As part of ArtWeek Boston, the debut performance in the United States will include a brief post-performance talk about Tsivopoulos’ piece between Professor Lanfranco Aceti and artist Stefanos Tsivopoulos. Tsivopoulos represented Greece at the 55th Venice Biennial. Themes of the artist’s relationship with Greece continue to present in his work, including One Too Many.

During this performance piece, performers intermittently present a series of photographic archives that show crowds of different political rallies from the era of Metapolitefsi in Greece. The Metapolitefsi (Greek: Μεταπολίτευση, translated as “polity/regime change”) was a period in modern Greek history after the fall of the military junta of 1967–74 that includes the transitional period from the fall of the dictatorship to the 1974 legislative elections and the democratic period immediately after these elections. Many consider that the Metapolitefsi ended with the Greece’s entry in the EU and the Euro in 2002.

One of the markers of Metapolitefsi is massive political rallies that took place exclusively in Syntagma Square, Athens. The trend marked a new era of democracy and the official end of the civil conflict, but also solidified populism and corruption in the Greek political system.

Stefanos Tsivopoulos, One Too Many, 2016.

Stefanos Tsivopoulos, One Too Many, 2016.

Stefanos Tsivopoulos, One Too Many, 2016.

Stefanos Tsivopoulos, One Too Many, 2016.

Stefanos Tsivopoulos, One Too Many, 2016.

Stefanos Tsivopoulos, One Too Many, 2016.

Stefanos Tsivopoulos, One Too Many, 2016.

Stefanos Tsivopoulos, One Too Many, 2016.

Stefanos Tsivopoulos, One Too Many, 2016.

For ArtWeek Boston, One Too Many was performed in the Boston Athenaeum. The location was a deliberate choice, allowing for the juncture of the physical space with the ideological content of Tsivopoulos’ work.

“Tsivopoulos’ performance places within the Boston Athenaeum,” wrote Aceti “a history of a recent past waking up a Greek historical archive and embedding it in the performer’s movements. This work of art, with its subtleties, obliges us to re-think the history of social engagement and the relation between the individual and the masses. In the contemporary political Western climate – which has strained social relations – the definition of populism much bandied about becomes a populistic statement in itself by corrupt partitocracies that have been, particular in Europe, unable to respond to the dismantling of the concepts of state and society without providing sound alternative frameworks. After having transformed politics into a process to dispense handouts, a process particularly visible in the Mediterranean, and not as a framework of social participation, now the lack of goods to be handed out due to the prolonging of the economic crisis is showing the fraying of the fabric of society. Emptied of a social vision, society manifests itself in individual’s gestures of immolation and rejection or in mass movements of anger and rejection. This strikingly simple performance of Tsivopoulos, using as a starting point the recent history of Greece and its turmoils, offers a moment of reflection on the relation between the individual, history, archive and the transformation of social structures in a moment in which it all seems to blend in the hypnotic visions presented by old and new charlatans. The body – in Tsivopoulos’ work of art – becomes the breathing history of archives which through broken movement and partial knowledge offers to the viewer, with a mere glimpse, the illusion that there may be an explanation and a solution hidden somewhere awaiting to be discovered.”

One Too Many by Stefanos Tsivopoulos will debut Saturday October 1, 2016, from 01:00 pm to 2:00 pm at the Boston Athenaeum 10½ Beacon Street, Boston, Massachusetts 02108. The event is free and open to the public.

This event is supported by the Museum of Contemporary Cuts. The Master Lecture by Stefanos Tsivopoulos, part of THE SOCIAL conference, is supported by the Boston University Center for the Humanities.

Stefanos Tsivopoulos (Gr/NL), is living and working between Amsterdam, Athens and New York.

His works often result from a long-term research into historical films and photographic archives, and are typified by a poetic cinematic language and the use of allegoric narratives. Tsivopoulos’ art practice is driven by an interest in the social, political and economic aspects that determine the production and use of images in the mediated world we live in. His films are presented extensively in both art museums and film festivals around the world. In 2013, he represented Greece in the 55th Venice Biennial with his multifaceted video installation History Zero.